The present invention relates to a capsule filling machine, in particular for the pharmaceutical industry, which fills a capsule comprising an upper capsule part and a lower capsule part.
Capsule filling machines are known from the prior art in different configurations. The European patent application EP 2 389 919 A2 features, for example, a capsule filling machine, in which a capsule on a conveying wheel is filled at a plurality of stations. In so doing, further operations, such as opening the capsules, weighing the capsules, etc. are performed. This capsule filling machine has basically proven its worth; however, the need often arises on the market that additional handling stations be arranged on such conveying wheels. Due to the desired compactness of the capsule filling machine, the number of available positions for stations is however limited. In the pharmaceutical industry, increased requirements with regard to a process control furthermore result here, so that a control has to be performed a number of times on the conveying wheel, whereby the freely selectable number of available stations is further reduced. It is, however, also frequently the case that the capsules must be filled multiple times, wherein a separate station is required for each filling because, for example, different products have to be mixed in the case of multiple fillings.